December 2015

There’s no inherent value, and maybe even a whiff of distaste, to ranking anything, but it’s also, let’s face it, kind of fun. And year-end lists also provide markers, for ourselves and others, of what we enjoyed at a certain moment in time, and hopefully a bit about why.

What do you do when confronted with loss? Many of us flip through old photographs, read letters, watch videos from years gone by. Or, to bring it up to date, scroll through saved files of various kinds. Maybe you talk it through with those close to you, who understand and get the context and import and strange resonances.

John Crowley’s Brooklyn – an achingly earnest immigrant coming-of-age story, adapted by Nick Hornby from Colm Tóibín’s novel and featuring a revelatory performance from Saoirse Ronan – is a picture out of time.

Everything about it seems imported from an earlier period of film history: the total absence of cynicism, the self-assurance in its quiet moments, its elegant but understated framing, its close-ups on luminously lit faces, its resolute insistence on small personal dramas to provide context for the much larger ones that frame them all hearken back to another age.

In Felt, our lead Amy is haunted and, it would seem, somewhat damaged. We’re never told the exact nature of the trauma that has plunged her into a barely communicative fugue state, but it’s clear it was related to men and to some sort of (likely sexual) violation.